Nasa Asteroid Capture: Three Possible Candidates Selected

This NASA artist's rendering obtained on May 31, 2013 shows what capturing an asteroid could look like. 

The US space agency has narrowed its hunt for an asteroid to capture to three, NASA said.

The asteroids fit the requirements of being between seven to 10 meters (yards) in size, and further study should be able to narrow the choice even more, scientists said at a conference in San Diego, California.

"We have two to three which we will characterize in the next year and if all goes well... those will be valid candidates that could be certified targets," said Paul Chodas, senior scientist at the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office.

The plan is to send a robotic spacecraft to capture the asteroid and drag it into orbit around the Moon.

Once there, astronauts could visit the asteroid and take samples of it back to Earth for study.

The spacecraft used for travel there and back would be the Orion multi-purpose vehicle, which is being built but has not yet been used, as well as a new deep space rocket launcher.

The program aims to break new ground by increasing NASA capabilities beyond low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station circles the globe.

Paul Chodas

NASA has touted the planetary defense capabilities the project would build toward protecting the Earth from a potential hazardous asteroid collision, as well as the technology it would boost for future human missions to deep space.

President Barack Obama has proclaimed the project would be a key step on the way to sending humans to Mars by the 2030s.

Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, described the asteroid mission as "pretty compelling."

"If you think about grabbing an object in space and then manipulating it for our use and putting it into a destination where we could go back and routinely visit and let commercial companies go visit, I think that is a pretty compelling activity."

Obama's 2014 budget for NASA asked for $100 million for the asteroid project, but the overall costs may be as high as $2 billion.

Bill Gerstenmaier

"It's a little different way than just a date and a destination. We are really good at just picking dates and destinations. But that's really hard in this budget environment where things are constrained and we have flat budgets, et cetera et cetera, to pull that off," said Gerstenmaier.

"It is not just a one-time thing. It actually feeds forward into the broader context of what we want to do with humans in space."

The launch could happen as early as 2017 or as late as 2019.

After launch of the robotic mission, the journey to the asteroid would take a year and a half, and the act of towing it toward the moon could take another three and a half years, NASA said.

The project would use a new fuel technology called solar electric propulsion.

"We are talking about engineering the solar system, in a way. We are talking about taking an asteroid which was once here, and then putting it into a useful orbit for our purposes," said Chodas.

"This is a very large idea here that we are talking about and I think it will reinvigorate interest in the space program," he said.

UA-Operated Stereo Camera Selected For Mars Mission

The UA's High Resolution Stereo Color Imager, or HiSCI, features an innovative rotation drive for three-dimensional imaging.

As the instrument orbits the Red Planet, it snaps pictures once a feature of interest on the surface below comes into view.

HiSCI then swings around and takes more pictures of the feature as it passes overhead.

NASA and the European Space Agency, or ESA, have embarked on a joint program to explore Mars in the coming decades and have selected five science instruments - including one from the University of Arizona - for the first mission.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, scheduled to launch in 2016, is the first of three joint robotic missions to the Red Planet. It will study the chemical makeup of the Martian atmosphere with a 1,000-fold increase in sensitivity over previous Mars orbiters.

The mission will focus on trace gases, including methane, which could be potentially geochemical or biological in origin and be indicators for the existence of life on Mars. It also will serve as an additional communications relay for Mars surface missions beginning in 2018.

A stereo camera called the High Resolution Stereo Color Imager, or HiSCI, operated by the UA, will be a part of the orbiter.

"The HiSCI camera will provide us with the very best color and stereo imaging of Mars we have ever seen, so we can find and study surface changes," said Alfred McEwen, a professor of planetary science at the UA who leads the HiSCI project.

HiSCI will be operated by the same team at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Lab, or LPL, that has been acquiring images from Mars in stunning detail using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera that is orbiting Mars.

HiSCI's color images will be much wider (more than 5 miles) than those of HiRISE (less than 1 mile), which will allow researchers to see much more of the Martian surface and changes that are occurring there.

Having the three-dimensional and color information from HiSCI also will add to the value of existing high-resolution images from HiRISE, according to Shane Byrne, assistant professor at LPL and deputy principal investigator on the HiSCI project.

Arianespace preferred launcher for Athena-Fidus satellite

Arianespace has been chosen to launch the French-Italian Athena-Fidus dual use satellite, within the scope of a contract signed by Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio and the French and Italian space agencies, CNES and ASI.

The French-Italian Athena-Fidus satellite will be lofted into geostationary transfer orbit during the second half of 2013 by an Ariane 5 or Soyuz launch vehicle operating from the Guiana Space Center, Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.

Athena-Fidus (Access on theaters for European allied forces nations-French Italian dual use satellite) is a French-Italian telecommunications satellite that uses state-of-the-art civil broadband Internet technologies.

Funded jointly by French space agency CNES, French defense procurement agency DGA, Italian space agency ASI and Italian Ministry of Defense, Athena-Fidus will provide communications services to both armed forces and civil security agencies in France and Italy. It will complement the capabilities offered by Syracuse 3 and Sicral satellites.

Thales Alenia Space will produce the Athena-Fidus satellite using a Spacebus 4000B2 platform. The satellite will weigh about 3,000 kg at launch, and has a design life exceeding 15 years.

"Arianespace is especially proud of once again being able to serve the French and Italian Ministries of Defense, CNES and the Italian space agency, just a few weeks after the successful launch of the Helios 2B satellite," said Jean-Yves Le Gall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace.

"We are also very pleased to bolster our strategic partnership with Thales Alenia Space through this latest contract, which clearly shows the strategic nature of our mission, namely to provide timely launches of satellites that support sovereignty in France and throughout Europe."

ESA Students selected to 'Fly Your Thesis' 2010

Following the debut of ESA’s ‘Fly Your Thesis!’ programme in 2009, four teams of university students have been selected to conduct their microgravity experiments during a second series of parabolic flights aboard an aircraft.

During the final selection phase, all of the teams wrote a detailed scientific proposal and a technical proposal. They also had to give an oral presentation during a workshop held at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in early December.

The teams, made up of students from five ESA Member States, were chosen from 12 teams whose proposals were short-listed in September 2009.

QNEM & nanos on board!
Four students from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and the University Federico II, in Naples, Italy will investigate the thermal diffusivity and conductivity of nanofluids – suspensions in conventional liquids of particles ranging in size from a few nanometres to 200 nanometres. This could lead to significant improvements in heat transfer devices.

Supermassive B
Four students from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France will study the properties of the dust resulting from asteroid collisions in order to improve exoplanet detection.

ARID
Two students from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands will investigate the interactions between soil particles to determine if the water repellence of top soils is affected by reorienting the water repellent coating on the surface of these particles. The results could improve understanding of the effects of forest fires and desertification on the repellence of water by soil.

GRAPPA
Four students from the University of Leicester, UK will investigate a ‘condensation mechanism for non-ideal kinetic gases of varying temperature’, and its relevance to the formation of planets and ‘rubble pile’ asteroids in the early Solar System.

The flights are scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2011.